Mistakes
by DrKCooper
Summary: Sitting in the dark on Holder's couch, the partners ruminate on their mistakes.


_Disclaimer: All recognizable _The Killing_ characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners including, but not limited to AMC and Netflix. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this fan fiction story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No financial gain is associated with the publishing of this story. No copyright infringement is intended._

_Author's Note: The series may be over, but I had this and one other story idea still floating about in my mind. Since I'm working on several other pieces right now, I thought getting this one complete and posted would be a nice break. I wish this series had more fans. -dkc_

_**Mistakes**_

"Whatever happened with the kid?"

Holder's voice broke through the comfortable silence they had been sitting in since arriving at his apartment.

Taking a drink of her beer, Linden looked at him with a confused look on her face.

"You know, the kid. The ferry guy," he smirked. "Don't tell me 1-900-LINDEN forgot already."

The kid.

Shaking her head at the thought, Sarah Linden didn't answer.

Cody. His name was Cody.

As she focused ahead at Holder's bookshelves she was reminded of one of their final conversations. She told him she broke things. If there was one thing she knew it was that. Jack. Reggie. Rick. She broke things.

"What is it you said to me? 'Sometimes what you get isn't what you really want'?" she continued looking ahead, avoiding his eyes.

"You tellin' me robbin' the cradle didn't get you some?" Holder teased, poking her with his elbow.

"Shut up."

He couldn't help but laugh as he took a swig of his beer.

He noticed the small amount of light in the room waning. It didn't bother him to be sitting in the dark with her. It wasn't any different than sitting in the dark car. They were comfortable like this and had been since the beginning days of their unlikely partnership.

"He wanted something more," her words were heavy with a sense of guilt for making him think such a thing could be possible.

"Doesn't everyone?" Holder said.

She was back on the island, if only in her mind, reliving the exciting days of flirting with Cody and enjoying the 9-5 lifestyle that didn't come with dead bodies. The first weeks were exciting, new. But the day Holder knocked on her door she knew that whatever she was doing out on the island was merely a distraction, a game that in no way resembled her real life.

"I hurt him," she muttered.

At this Holder turned his bony shoulder into the back of the couch and faced her.

"You are who you are," his voice was soothing.

"I break things," she glanced at him.

"Some things break too easy, Lind. Some things just meant to be broken."

She looked at him with her patented questioning eyebrows and asked for an explanation of this bit of Holder wisdom he was pushing.

He shrugged.

Steven Holder was many things, a coward he was not.

"If it was meant to happen or, you know, keep happening, it wouldn't have broken without resistance."

She wasn't surprised at his passive way of telling her it was wrong with Cody. Or maybe he was telling her getting away from homicide was wrong.

Either way.

"We all make mistakes, Linden."

"Not you, too?" she said sarcastically.

"Of course not! I am a model of perfection," he said.

She could barely make out his smile in the now darker room.

"You know my biggest mistake," he shook his head. His days as a junkie and the strain on his relationship with his sister still weighed heavily on his conscience. "Second biggest mistake? Letting you walk away from it all that day."

She remembered it well. They'd been in Holder's car across the street from the Larson's garage. That was the last time she had seen Holder until he turned up at her house. They had called, there were texts, but they hadn't seen each other.

"What I do can't be your mistake."

He looked right at her.

"What I don't do to stop you can be," he insisted.

For a moment all the bravado, the almost caricature-like attitude of the man disappeared. This was the part of himself that he didn't trust with anyone.

Except her.

Sarah Linden had this sway with him that he couldn't remember another person ever having. He'd often thought that if she had been in his life when he was using that she would have been able to talk him into getting clean sooner.

"Was Sonoma a mistake?" he found himself asking aloud.

"Rick? No. Well—" she considered her relationship beginning to end with her one-time psychiatrist. "I'm sorry I hurt him, if I hurt him. But thinking about it now I can't imagine myself ever married and living in Sonoma."

"Yeah, cuz all this rain is totally good for the mental health," Holder chuckled at himself.

She looked at him in that somewhat serious way that was merely an attempt to hide a smile.

"Was Caroline a mistake?" Linden asked.

There was a light in Holder's eyes as she said Caroline's name that made Linden's hope diminish. What she was hoping for, she couldn't quite voice. But if Holder were still in love with Caroline it wouldn't matter.

"Caroline's pregnant."

This came as a huge surprise to Linden. She thought they had broken up. He hadn't mentioned Caroline recently and the only time Linden could remember seeing the attorney was at a joint terrorism taskforce meeting with the Seattle Police Department, district attorney's office and the local FBI office.

"I'm going to be a daddy," Holder smiled genuinely.

"I didn't know you—"

"We're not, but she's having the baby," he seemed so happy.

"Oh," was all Sarah Linden managed to say.

There was a heavy silence between them as they returned to the beer in front of them and looked everywhere but at one another. It didn't take long for Holder to read into the way Linden had reacted to his news. He wasn't surprised, actually.

"We're not getting back together. I pushed her away. I told her I was a junkie."

"You're a recovering addict," Linden said. "There's a difference."

"Not to her, apparently."

There was a deep sadness in Holder's voice as he said this. He knew that his previous drug use had burned bridges with those who knew him then, but he never imagined that it could burn developing bridges in the here and now.

"I'm sorry, Holder," Linden finally looked at him and in her eyes there was kindness and understanding.

He shrugged his shoulders, swigging on his bottle of beer.

"Mistakes that haunt us…" he trailed off.

"They don't have to."

Sarah Linden was not a big believer in penance. She also wasn't a big believer in the idea of karma. She could understand the history, baggage, really, that remained between Holder and his family. What she couldn't understand was how a woman who knew this Holder—the clean, hard-working detective—could possibly write him off simply because of his past. We all have a past, she reflected on her own. One thing she appreciated about Holder was his ability to know her past without judging her for it.

"She thought my tattoos were just some cute way of expressing myself," he winced at the reminder.

This made her chuckle to his surprise and confusion.

"You think that's funny?" he poked her in the side.

"It kind of is," she was still snickering at the thought.

"What's so funny?" he continued poking her as she now swatted at his hand.

"Like _you_ have ever had trouble expressing yourself with that mouth!"

"Ouch," he put his hand to his heart. "You wound."

She took another drink and was once again staring ahead at bookshelves filled with self-help and nature.

"1-900-LINDEN is jealous she can't express herself like this perfect specimen can," he waved his hand up and down his body.

"Right."

He, too, began peering at the bookshelves as best he could in the dark. They stayed like that for a while, in complete silence, finishing off their beer. Linden was thinking about Holder as a father and remembering all the times she had watched him interact effortlessly with Jack. Holder was thinking about what the future held for he and his partner. As easy as it was to imagine himself as a father, it was quite the opposite imagining himself without Sarah Linden.

It was there, sitting in the dark, that they both realized that sticking together as partners was the one of the few things in their lives that wasn't a mistake.

_-finis-_


End file.
